Dogara: Current house of reps best performing in Nigeria’s history

Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, says the lower legislative chamber under his leadership is the best performing in Nigeria’s history.

Dogara said this on Wednesday in Abuja, while receiving awards from the UK parliament and the Nigerian government in recognition of his “exemplary leadership” and contribution to passage of Ease Of Doing Business bills respectively.

He also said the lower legislative chamber gave the current administration maximum cooperation.

His statement comes about a week after President Muhammadu Buhari faulted his relationship with the current national assembly which he said was not the best.

Represented by Ossai Ossai, chairman, house committee on ethics & privilege, the speaker said the federal lawmakers supported Buhari to ensure speedy passage of bills that would fast-track implementation of federal government policies.

“When we started out on the 8th assembly, it was our desire and thank God we can say today that we have cleaned up virtually all laws we inherited from even 1800,” he said.

“Before we embarked on this massive exercise, some of our Law books were still containing Pounds Sterling in some laws, some addresses in the United Kingdom were even mentioned. To the credit of the 8th assembly, all those things are no longer reflected in the body of our laws.”

He added that for the ease of doing business, the legislators did their best to attract better investment into Nigeria.

“There were times when we ensured that within days or weeks, we passed these bills that were required to jumpstart this process to bring Nigeria out of recession and prosper,” he said.

“This made Nigeria jump about 24 places in the global index of the world ranking of nations in the ease of doing business. We will continue to do our best in the interest of our country and of its people in whatever position we are.”